Ways to Optimize Email Marketing

To reach optimum returns on your emails, invest some time in filtering your email strategy through your brand standards and your marketing goals to arrive at a selection of possible messaging approaches. Then test the variables, using a basic A/B split or any other segmentation that is important you.

Here are a few things you can test.
Offer -- what offer will move your audience closer to a purchase? You may intuit the answer, or have to follow a business directive to make a particular offer, but by all means test themes and variations to create an offer the audience can't refuse. (Be careful of too much product discounting unless you want your brand to be associated with "cheap.")
· Financial incentives: money off, free shipping, two for the price of one, discounted service contract or installation.
· Non-monetary value: perks, quality upgrades, valuable information packet, accumulated rewards.
· Time-based incentives: 3-day sale, offer ends Saturday, for the month of May only. Audience empathy -- test ways of connecting on an emotional or intellectual level with your prospects.
· Exclusivity: be the first to own, leave the crowds behind, apply for exclusive entry.
· Problem-solving: a better way to ___, take the back-break out of ___, get results faster, smarter, more reliably.
· Emotion: because you love your children / pet / garden / beer, because you care about this issue / institution / group. Tone and manner -- while these must follow your brand standards, email is inherently a more personal medium than many other channels, so you can test some variables here.
· Timbre: taking a warm, personal approach versus a more clinical exposition of facts.
· Length of copy: test long, medium and short copy (depending on the product or service).
· Persuasion versus urgency: test to see if some of your audience wants to be schmoozed with reasons to buy (product attributes and excellence) versus receiving nonstop promotions. Structure -- where the offer appears may make a difference in how it is understood and acted on.
· Placement: try placing offers in the subject line, the headline, the call to action, a sidebar, and in image captions and call-outs. Make each instance a link and then track opens and where users click.
· Graphics -- be careful with presenting headlines and key offers in graphics, which may well get blocked from view in the inbox. Simpler is often better.
You can test which copy approach yields the best results simply by tracking click-throughs and conversions on sent emails. To dive deeper, you can also perform other types of research. Use focus groups or surveys to test the impact and takeaway of your offers and the way they are worded. You can also do eye-tracking studies to find out how readers scan your emails. When you learn what path their eyes follow, you can maximize the effect by placing your key inducements, either copy points or visuals, along the same path, in order of importance.
There are almost always several good ways of writing and designing any advertising message. If you try to test every possible combination of variables, you'll go cross-eyed. Apply lessons learned from your marketing in other channels to your email advertising, and vice-versa, and you will find the options narrowing nicely into a powerful set of guidelines you can use creatively again and again.

New Media Marketing Confidence on the Rise

The articles linked below provide valuable advice about your audience, but it's up to you to learn it and share it with your advertisers. Educating yourself on the new ways your audience uses media is the only way to continue creating more effective solutions to your client's marketing problems

87.4% of Executives to Invest in New Media MarketingConfidence in new media is on the rise, according to the American Advertising Federation's AAF Media Investment Survey 2007. Results show a growing inclination among executives to augment traditional media with new media properties and experimentation, and responses indicate that traditional media categories are in serious need of innovation if they are to remain competitive.A full 87.4% of respondents believe that the pace and scope of innovation in the media landscape inspire creativity, and they are willing to invest their budgets to harness that creativity.Other findings:

* 73% of respondents reserve 1%-20% of their budget for experimentation and new media properties.
* 12.37% of respondents reserve 21%-40% of their budget for experimentation and new media properties.

Concerning media planning in 2007, respondents ranked "I am always open to new ways to use traditional media" at 78%, "

the right media mix almost always includes a balance of traditional and nontraditional media" at 75.5%, and

"the search for new media properties to grow my brand never stops" at 57.7%.

On Similar Topic...Email is a key point of influence for consumer purchase decisions, according to the Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions research released in January by Word Of Mouth Marketing Association member company Microsoft. The findings suggest that many of consumers' major decisions are influenced by email conversations with friends and family and point to the medium as a place where marketers can insert messages that might impact consumers during the decision-making process.

Other findings:
45% of frequent online users say email is their primary form of communication.
66% of male and 81% of female respondents discuss social arrangements (what films, concerts, or events to see or where to eat) via email.
41% of men discuss financial services purchases via email.
77% of women discuss travel plans via email.

Combining the stats regarding company intention to invest in new media with the information regarding how people use email ought to provide some interesting ways for you to use email marketing tools to help your clients.